Need an inspiring example of an SC school that is making strides and reimagining the learning experience for students? North Charleston High School of Innovation staff shares how they are leveraging state-waived requirements, including seat time, to allow for more flexibility and creativity in their approaches to meet the needs of the students they serve. Read about their story, teamwork, and collective drive to truly think outside of the box!
What does it mean to be a School of Innovation? What process did your school go through to become a School of Innovation?
Mary Studemeyer (assistant principal): The process started last March, so it took us a year to become a School of Innovation. Our district at this time last year came to us and said there was some legislation that could help us be a School of Innovation. Innovation can mean a lot of things. In our context, one of the main things it meant was that we could seek some waivers with the state to free some of the red tape that keeps us doing the same things over and over.
First we sought approval from our local school board and then we applied with the state. August of the summer of 2021 is when we were approved. The waiver of seat time has made the most difference for us as far as rethinking time and space rather than focusing on the hours a student sits in a seat. To be a School of Innovation, we started with think tanks and rethinking the way we have done education for over 100 years.
Nathaniel Spitulski (assistant principal): The process at our school was not complicated. It involved inviting our teachers to come together and brainstorm, writing down ideas on big poster paper, and sticking them on the wall. We looked at the ideas we liked and wondered how we could make each one work. It was a grassroots movement of sorts. We had to discuss which ideas could happen immediately and which ones would happen two to three years down the road. So there were a lot of meetings first to discuss these things. One of the principles was not being afraid if something doesn't work. It’s okay to fail as long as we are learning from the failure. We are always looking for people who are willing to try and be okay to fail.
Could you talk a little more about why waiving seat time was important to you and what that has allowed you to do?
Mary Studemeyer (assistant principal): Currently, what we have been doing for 100 years is based on the industrial age. High school for today’s students looks a lot like their parents' schools and their grandparents’ schools too. But the world has changed drastically.
Seat time was the biggest leverage point. Seat time is an industrial concept. The idea is that everyone will go into this classroom and you have to have this number of hours in this course to get credit. What we have seen is there are students who can master standards more quickly or students who need a little more time. Currently, for those students who need more time, we fail them, and then they have to repeat the course. What does that do to a student’s psyche and self-worth when they fail because they need more time? So not having the seat time constraint lets us look at individualized learning plans for students. We determine, “What do you know and not know? What have you mastered based on SC standards?” Time is no longer something that drives those questions.
The motivation we have seen in our students and the teacher clarity it has improved is impactful. Students understand why they are doing this work. It empowers them. That flexibility of time and place is important.
We adjusted our educational structure to the needs of our community.
Why was this a focus for your team? To come together and think about things differently when it comes to teaching and learning at your school?
Nathaniel Spitulski (assistant principal): What we were doing wasn’t working. We had kids who knew the information but they weren't able to pass the class because of a theory that is a hundred years old. We have taken the constraints off and our kids are flourishing. You keep doing the same thing over and over, you’re going to get the same results. There was a frustration level with teachers, administration, and our students. So why not do something different?
If you look at the past 100 years, the world is completely different but we are stuck in education doing the same things over and over. We are dealing with different students too. It’s time for us to start listening to what kids want
Henry Darby (principal): One also has to look at our demographics and the society as a whole and our community. Here in Charleston County School District, as in other districts around the country, one size does not fit all. We have to curtail our educational structure towards our community. So that is a reason for why we made this choice too.
This society expects the same structure for students who come from a well-balanced middle and upper class background as you do from poverty-stricken communities. We adjusted our educational structure to the needs of our community.
The great majority of our students are in poverty. When you have a student who has a job 16 miles away, and has to catch an Uber for $16 there and back, how is this child going to maintain seat time? Or a child whose mother has cancer and he is working a job to take care of his family? So that is why we took away the red tape and the constraints.
Bryanna Smalls (teacher): Another reason behind why we did this was our students. Our students were part of our think tanks and said they wanted to do school differently too. The purpose wasn’t there for them. We want the kids to be in our building and we want them to want to come to school. If we do school differently, we can get more kids in the building, participating, and being successful.
What are some of the strategies and structures you now have in place to meet learners where they are?
Bryanna Smalls (teacher): Our biggest leap of faith was the pods. Pods are mixed classes that meet students where they are. One focus is supporting the kids who need to graduate and helping them get the credits they need to do so. Seat time was hindering that. So kids who need to recover grades or assignments can do so in a pod.
When they need credit recovery, we can diagnose them to see what they need to master to get the credit, and they have the assignments to get the credit made up. Instead of sitting in the class for an entire semester, we test them before they begin and we see what skills they actually need. Once the credit is made up in the pod, they are free to move to another class without that seat time holding them back. It’s been very successful. We have a handful of kids who weren’t eligible for graduation who will now graduate in June. We are doing initial credit and credit recovery in pods. It’s a system that is working well for North Charleston High School.
Want to learn more? Listen to the rest of the conversation in our April podcast here: